Contractions of Smooth Muscle.
Once smooth muscle has developed full contraction, the
amount of continuing excitation ca usually be reduced to far less than the initial level yet the muscle
maintains its full force of contraction. Further, the energy consumed to maintain contraction is often
minuscule, sometimes as little as 1/300 the energy required for comparable sustained skeletal muscle
contraction. This is called the ―latch‖ mechanism. The importance of the latch mechanism is that it can
maintain prolonged tonic contraction in smooth muscle for hours with little use of energy.
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